Sam N. Mkandawire

Background

Sam N. Mkandawire holds a Bachelor of Commerce in accountancy from the University of Malawi and a Master of Business Administration from the Brandeis University School of Business and Economics in Massachusetts. He currently serves as a Senior Project Controls Specialist – Cost at Duke Energy in Raleigh, North Carolina, where he establishes cost baselines, manages monthly project forecasts, quantifies risks and oversees the financial performance of multi‑million‑dollar regional major capital projects.

Mkandawire’s career spans more than 20 years at the intersection of project management and finance, giving him firsthand experience with the strategic challenges inherent in capital allocation under regulatory uncertainty. Outside of work, he enjoys watching soccer and movies and has a deep interest in decision science and regulatory economics. He is pursuing a Doctor of Business Administration to master rigorous applied research methods through close engagement with faculty and peers, with the goal of translating his practical experience into evidence‑based frameworks that address real‑world strategic problems in the utility sector.

Research Interest

Mkandawire’s research examines the impact of the Regulatory Recovery Uncertainty Principle on capital allocation and strategy in investor‑owned utilities. His work sits at the intersection of operations research — specifically multi‑criteria decision analysis — utility finance, regulatory economics, natural language processing and machine learning. He is developing a framework to model regulatory preference uncertainty and calculate a project‑specific probability of regulatory recovery, which he refers to as the RRAI. His goal is to help regulated utilities optimize their capital portfolios not only for financial return but also for strategic alignment with evolving commission priorities, thereby strengthening decision‑making under the deep uncertainty of the energy transition.